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Project Info

Project Name: Public Cobbler Server

Target Audience: All users of Fedora

Expiration/Delivery Date (required): 4/31/2007

Description/Summary: Cobbler is a Linux installation server. By hosting a cobbler cobbler server, we can allow people to remotely browse (via "yum install koan") the list of "profiles" a server offers and then allow them to install these profiles in various virtual machines (Xen PV, qemu/KVM) with a single command line command.

Project plan (Detailed): Install a Cobbler server on a Fedora hosted machine and configure it for public access, with a set of kickstarts that point at Fedora mirrors. Disk space needs will be minimal as all content will be hosted later. Construct kickstarts for base installs of various useful profiles (base Fedora, minimal virt image, possibly a spin or two) and advertise to public lists how to try it out. As people come up with other useful spins/kickstarts, add them to the public server so they can be browsed.

Initially I would offer up for distros F8 and F9 (with the update repo configured in kickstart) for x86 and x86_64. Cobbler's public XMLRPC
would be enabled (TCPIP port 25151 by default) as koan would need it though the read-write port would be disabled. Apache proxies the XMLRPC over port 80.

This would allow for folks to use koan to install virtual machines painlessly for various hosted external profiles, and also do reinstalls of existing Linux systems. Furthermore, if they want to use the koan Live CD (I'd build one for this purpose), we could also allow them to use this server for PXE-like baremetal installation in ways that do not even require PXE. (The koan Live CD works by erasing an HDD, setting up grub, and running koan).

Goals:

(1) Set up a public cobbler server and have people use it, to determine if there are any scaling issues regarding public cobbler servers
(2) Get people using koan
(3) Work on getting this into something that is a permanent fixture for Fedora virt/bare-metal deployment
(4) Make virtualization ubiquitous by reducing user barriers to entry
(5) Encourage exploration of community spins in easy to consume ways
(6) (secondary goal) Encourage cobbler adoption within organizations by offering up a public instance for people to try out

Specific resources needed

Virtual machine that is publically accessible for network traffic on port 80, with root access for configuration. Virtual machine is not picky on requirements, I'd suggest 20 GB disk and 2 GB RAM, though it will not be hosting content.

In lieu of a virtual machine, real hardware is also accessible.

I will need to be able to SSH into the virtual machine to configure it.

Additional Info (Optional)

Let me know if you have any other questions -- mpdehaan on #cobbler, mdehaan AT redhat.com, etc.